I don't want to be the bearer of bad news for any website owner out there who has just had their website 'done', but the old attitude of a website ever being completely finished should now be well and truly thrown out of the window.

So your site is being beaten in search engine rankings by one full of utter rubbish, no real content and far too many keywords just listed over and over. Should you be worried? My view is no, definitely not.

Go Organic - the healthy sensible way to improve your website hits

Posted: 02/08/2011 13:24

Some people ask me what I mean by Organic SEO. I usually mumble something about naturally occurring content being superior, but I don’t know if I actually explain it well enough to convince them of the right way to go.

Organic Search Engine Optimisation comes from thinking about what you most want to say – not to a search engine – but to your prospective clients.

Organic, when used as an adjective takes the following forms...

or•gan•icadj.1. Of, relating to, or derived from living organisms: organic matter.(The definition above is directly taken from the free dictionary)

Your website should be alive... it should be a living breathing entity, one that changes and grows depending on the demands placed on it. Organic content, in this context, is content that naturally occurs and changes as your business demands it.

Content should be simple, healthy and close to nature – it should be real and necessary content, produced to assist the person visiting the site.

Producing quality organic content for your website relies on you taking into account various factors:

• Why would a visitor come to your website?• Is the content you have going to help them?• Does it clearly point the way forward?• Is it informative, well produced and professional?• Is it targeted accurately?

A very simple example of this is one you can see on the home pages of many sites, the welcome message.

‘Welcome to SEOToGo’

So many companies choose this as their opening statement on the first page of their website. It’s usually a H1 tag (in html terms) and so gets increased importance by the search engines. It’s right at the top of the page, so search engines assume it’s more important than something at the bottom of the page.

Why would you waste this important position on saying words that are not going to gain you any hits and not going to explain anything about you to your visitor?

A more useful opener is:

‘Search Engine Optimisation to improve your website’

Because of course, that is the point of the website. That is the service that I am selling. Did any of you feel less than cared for because I left out the word welcome? I do hope not.

Black hat SEO tricks and practices are now old hat. Search engine algorithms, like Google’s Panda, are getting wiser to hidden and improper ways of promoting websites and are increasingly putting emphasis on good practices, excellent content and interactivity.

Instant results are not a given, but long term genuine increases in traffic and also – more importantly – in more business from those hits is realistic and achievable. The right people will wind up on your home page and know they came to the right place. Now that is added value.

I hope that this article has in some way increased your awareness of organic search engine optimisation and your understanding of why I feel it is so very important.

I'd be more than happy to work with you to improve your site using these tried and tested methods, call me and we can talk about options.

Comments

Judith

I like your definition of organic SEO - even if it came from the free dictionary. It's very apt and I guess this is exactly the kind of thing that the Panda update is trying to encourage.

Clare Green

13/10/2011

Thanks Judith. The organic bit came from the free dictionary, not the SEO part. I suspect an edit is in order on this article! And yes I agree, Panda has not caused websites with organically generated SEO content to fail. I believe most of it is common sense.